Abstract

The adverse health consequences of air pollution are of concern currently and there is a fear that these consequences escalate along with economic growth. The effect of economic growth on air pollution deaths is analyzed in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden by applying the Evironmental Kuznets Curve approach, according to which economic growth has competing effects on air pollution and related deaths. On the one hand, emissions tend to increase as the scale of economic actvity increases, but on the other hand, consumers and firms in richer countries use cleaner goods and adopt cleaner technologies. In Denmark and Finland, the latter effects are stronger, while in Sweden the opposite is true. Therefore, air pollution deaths will decrease in Denmark and Finland butincreae in Sweden. Since country's own emissions do not determine air pollution completely, the paper briely analyzes emissions from the Baltic countries and Russia.